Project to help farmers

Innovative project to help farmers back into business

23 February 2011

An innovative project to help retired tenant farmers to run
their own businesses is to be extended thanks to a £420,000 RDPE
grant.

The ARC-Addington Fund is buying a redundant farm at Ruthvoes,
near Indian Queens in Cornwall, after obtaining planning permission
to create four ‘work/live’ units. The RDPE grant will help develop
the business units while the ARC Addington Fund will convert a
large barn on the site into four affordable homes. A further small
barn will become a workshop alongside the construction of three
purpose built workshops. There is also sufficient land to create a
land-based business on the site. A biomass boiler will provide heat
for the whole site and solar panels will be installed on the roof
of the new build workshop complex.

The new development follows the Fund’s successful Trevorva
project – its first affordable housing development for retired
tenant farmers – when five affordable homes were created from three
redundant barns. Five years on, the project has housed two families
who have left farming and have found alternative employment and
three young families who have the ability to create an income from
agriculture in the area but would otherwise not be able to afford
to live there.

RDPE – This project is part financed by the European
Agricultural Fund for Rural Development 2007-2013: Europe investing
in rural areas. In England, the European Agricultural Fund for
Rural Development 2007-2013 is delivered through the Rural
Development Programme for England (RDPE). It is an important part
of the Common Agricultural Policy and helps create genuinely
sustainable farming, forestry and food sectors, whilst bringing
wider benefits for the economy, the environment and rural
communities. It is the European Union’s major investment route for
protecting and enhancing the environment while securing a range of
public benefits for society. Defra is the Managing Authority and is
delivered in the region by the South West RDA, Natural England and
the Forestry Commission. For more information, see www.sw-ruralgateway.info